


Taking One for the Team

by veselko



Series: Persona 5 Snippets [5]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Banter, Blood, Blood Loss, Bonding, Character Study, Delirium, Friendship, Gen, Major Character Injury, Near Death Experiences, Slight OOC, Total Count of One Bitch Slap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 01:38:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12288489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veselko/pseuds/veselko
Summary: The Phantom Thieves + 1 are at it again with another heist in Mementos, but things don't go as expected and the group is split. To make matters worse, Ryuji, the person with the least amount of tolerance for the +1 is stuck with the +1. Oh, and the +1 is making himself tolerable. Ryuji thinks the world is just out to get him.Or: In which Ryuji and Akechi are stuck together in a rare safe room in Mementos until Akira and the gang can find them to heal the wound Akechi got protecting Ryuji. Ryuji very adamantly claims that Akechi merely tripped onto the enemy's attack.





	Taking One for the Team

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT!"

"Must you be so vulgar at a time like this?" Akechi sighed, clutching his side. Bright red spilled onto the white of his costume, steadily spreading like a mockery of a flower.

"This is the perfect time to be effin' vulgar!" Ryuji huffed, pacing around the safe room. His gait was unsteady, and one of his knees looked about to buckle, but he kept wearing a hole into the floor. "You're leakin' like a faucet, I am justified to panic and be as 'vulgar' as I want to be!"

"Justified huh?" Akechi chuckled, wincing as he did.

Both of them paused on the topic of _justice._

"Oh, so you can make jokes but I can't curse?" Ryuji squinted at the ace detective.

"You gave me the perfect opportunity and I took it," Akechi shrugged with a careless smile. The brunet could be oblivious to social cues at times, but in all honestly, he loved riling up Skull. Behind a mask, the pirate persona user was still so expressive...

Ryuji almost couldn't believe his eyes—or his thoughts—as Akechi seemed almost human in his actions. It was much less than the perfect posterboy he showed on tv. Of course, the fake-as-cotton-candy smile was still there, but it was less strained, less pronounced, and more of a grimace to hide the pain in his side.

"Also took the perfect opportunity to jump into enemy fire," Ryuji retorted without heat before collapsing in one of the chairs, arms crossed. The chair leaned back with the force Ryuji put on it before uprighting itself.

"It was either you or me," Akechi pointed out.

"Not much of a difference there," Ryuji huffed.

"Skull, must you be so difficult about this?"

"Crow, must you be so carefree about this?" Ryuji mocked. "You got effin' shot, man! You don't—you can't just—ugh! Don't jump in front of me next time!"

"I did not jump," Akechi gently corrected. "I caught myself in crossfire."

"Sure, sure. I could've taken it y'know. I deal the most physical damage in the whole group, so I'm better at taking hits," Ryuji sighed.

"Hmm," Akechi hummed absentmindedly, and Ryuji suddenly noticed how pale he's become.

He's not sure if persona users can die in the cognitive world, but it couldn't be anything less than a mental shutdown, and as much as he disliked the detective prince, Ryuji wasn't keen on letting the loser who "saved" him turn into a vegetable. Then again, as persona users, they take their physical body into the cognitive world. Akechi would simply...disappear. If they brought his body back out of the cognitive world, would he still have that wound? Or would the transformation undo itself and—

The lines between reality and make-believe were too thin for Ryuji to decipher. These things were best left for Makoto or Akira.

Surfacing from his stray thoughts, he approaches Akechi, and shook the boy lightly.

"Hey, Crow. Stay with me here. Don't fall asleep," he warned.

Amber eyes blinked rapidly as if awakening.

"You okay?"

"That's a stupid question," Akechi laughed, wincing when a spurt of blood literally gurgled out of his side.

"Oh my god," Ryuji hissed, panic rising once more.

"Calm down, I'm...fine," Akechi giggled. "What is the definition of 'fine' anyway?"

"Oh my god," Ryuji repeated, disbelief coloring his demeanor. "You're delirious."

"Delirious is such a funny word too..."

And the more Akechi giggled, the more he bled.

"Stop laughin' man, this ain't funny," Ryuji growled, undoing his scarf to press against the wound. The room was too dark to distinguish between shades of red, but Ryuji could feel the phantom weight of blood soaking the cloth.

"Life isn't funny but we laugh anyway," Akechi sang.

"That doesn't even make sense!"

"You don't make sense."

"Are you even listening to yourself?"

Ryuji knew Akechi wasn't exactly in his right mind, but whatever kept the stupid detective awake and breathing was priority. Even if it was this banter—banter he probably shared with Akira and his stupid confidence, or Yusuke with his stupid obliviousness—

He would share it if it meant keeping those damn eyes open for another second—

"Wake the fuck up!"

SMACK!

"OW! I'M AWAKE! I'm awake, geez," Akechi screeched, but it came out like a weak whine. "What do I have to give for you to let me blink?"

"Your eyes were closed for fifteen seconds. That's too much for one blink," Ryuji replied almost seriously.

"Are you seriously putting a price on blinking?" Akechi asked disbelievingly.

"You're on the verge of death. I have the right."

"No one has the right to anything in this world," Akechi sighed.

"Woah, where'd that come from?"

"It's true. I wanted revenge on my father. Guess I'm not getting it if I bleed out on the trashy floors of a make-believe Shibuya station," Akechi chuckled.

"You got a shitty father too?" Ryuji asked, surprised.

"Too? Well I mean if your dad pushed your mom to suicide and left you for the foster system, which sucks might I add...then yes. I had a _shitty_ father."

"Huh. I guess I was wrong about you," Ryuji hummed.

"Wrong about me?" Akechi's brows furrowed behind his red crow mask. "What did you assume?"

"Thought you were this...know-it-all kid who preached justice when you didn't suffer the deep end like all of us did," Ryuji shrugged.

"I am not," Akechi grumbled.

"Coulda fooled me," Ryuji grinned. "You speak like those people we bumped into in that buffet Joker and Panther and I went to. Proper grammar and all. You should try casual peasant speak like us, with memes and profanity and all instead. Then we wouldn't be here."

Akechi's face scrunched up in distaste.

"But that's...shitty."

"Ha!" Ryuji barked. "Who's being vulgar now?"

"Sorry. I assure you, you heard wrong," Akechi sniffed snobbishly, imperiously, and raised his head pompously. "I meant to say 'shoddy,' you know."

There was a stretch of silence...

And they both burst into quiet laughter.

"Oh shit, oh shit your—!" Ryuji gasped, pressing the wound with more pressure. The scarf was drenched at this point, and Ryuji couldn't help the panic from rising to all new levels.

It was at that point the door slammed open, and Joker walked in with all his leadership glory, coattails flying like shadows behind him, Panther at his heels.

"You guys are definitely telling us why you're all laughing like this when one of you is dying," Ann huffed sternly, summoning Carmen as Akira slapped a quick adhesive patch on the wound.

"What happened?" Akira asked, frowning as his hand hovered over the wound, Pixie bursting into flames at his back.

"I took a hit cause Skull wasn't paying attention," Akechi confessed as two healers spammed Media on him.

Ryuji gaped before a rage settled on him.

"What?! You told me you were in the crossfire!"

"Well consider it payback for slapping me in the face."

**Author's Note:**

> This was purely self-indulgent banter, and a little warm-up to get back into the groove of writing fanfiction. In the end though, Ryuji still ended up hating Akechi's guts, and Akechi still thinks Ryuji's manners are gross.
> 
> And let's pretend this near-death experience for our boy detective did not add to his mental instability (because he's too unstable to be any more unstable...if that makes sense).


End file.
